Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Why the UN Small Arms Treaty Sucks

The UN Small arms treaty is aimed at preventing or at least alleviating the problem of various terrorist, criminal, and insurgent groups getting their hands upon small arms, in order to help prevent crime and human rights violations. Or at least, that's what the UN would have you believe.

1. It won't work.
The UN is an international joke for several reasons. One of them is their complete inability to enforce anything without target country permission. Iran, "rogue state" is perhaps the best example of this. If a country doesn't want to enforce the provisions of the treaty, even if they've signed the treaty, the UN will be powerless.

2. This treaty isn't about preventing crime and human rights violations. If the UN actually cared about human rights, the People's Republic of China (PRC) wouldn't be on the UN's Human Rights Council. Keeping the terrorists and criminals from getting weapons would be wonderful, but this treaty is more likely to affect the very people whom it claims to help.

3. They talk of tracing the firearms back to their last legitimate owner, and "holding them accountable". The problem comes when the last legitimate owner was a government, or a citizen of a country that is not a signatory of the treaty, or that chooses to violate the treaty. Then the UN is stuck, impotent.

4. Tracing the firearms to the last legitimate owner would require gun registration, something that is seen as being a precursor to confiscation of firearms, and rightfully so, as the previous examples of Hitler and other totalitarian human rights violators have shown.

I'm not comparing the UN to the Nazis, as the UN doesn't fit that label (they fall under the label of "power-hungry kleptocrats", not "psychopathic sadistic bastards"), but whenever they say that they're doing something to prevent human rights violations, remember that their Human Rights Council includes the PRC, Cuba, and Djibouti, all "single party republics", which is another way of saying "totalitarian dictatorship". It also includes various other countries where human rights are not respected. This is why I consider it to be a sick joke whenever the UN references human rights.

Sources:
Fox News: Proposed U.N. Treaty To Regulate Global Firearms Trade Raising Concerns For U.S. Gun Owners

Human Rights Council: Membership of the Human Rights Council


United Nations Disarmament: Small Arms and Light Weapons



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